Prologue Magazine Recounts a Costly Battle over Sanity, and the Struggle behind One of Reagan's Landmark SpeechesPress Release · Monday, July 9, 2007

Press Release
July 9, 2007

Prologue Magazine Recounts a Costly Battle over Sanity, and the Struggle behind One of Reagan’s Landmark Speeches

Washington, DC…He was one of the heirs to the McCormick fortune of Chicago,
and she was one of the first well-educated women’s rights activists.
Their marriage in 1904 was one of the big social events of the times.

But all was not well. Stanley McCormick’s sanity was in question, and
he required constant care. Katharine McCormick began a decades-long battle
with her husband’s physicians over the proper care for him-a fight documented
in the files of the National Archives and Records Administration.

In the Summer Prologue, author Miriam Kleiman recounts the long, very expensive,
and often bitter battle over McCormick’s sanity and the involvement of
St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, DC, as well as Katharine’s
pioneering work in reproductive health. The story is told using records from
St. Elizabeth’s, for many years a federal facility.

Elsewhere in the Summer Prologue, Peter Robinson, a speechwriter for President
Ronald Reagan who is now a scholar at Stanford University, recounts his work
drafting Reagan’s speech at the Berlin Wall in 1987-the one that called
on Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall.”

Reagan was getting strong pressure from the foreign policy establishment to
take out the line or to use “language so vague and euphemistic that everybody
could see right away he didn’t mean it,” Robinson writes. But the
President did mean it, and Robinson tells how it got there and how it stayed
there, becoming one of Reagan’s most famous lines in one of his most
memorable speeches.

Some interesting stories have no endings where everything is neatly tied up:
they are mysteries. Tim Walch and Maureen Harding of the Hoover Library offer “America’s
Mysteries, Riddles, and Controversies,” based on an exhibit at the library
through October 28. They take a look at a number of mysteries, including those
involving Billy the Kid, Amelia Earhart, Betsy Ross, and Butch Cassidy and
the Sundance Kid.

In the regular Spotlight feature, “Chasing Technology,” Steve
Greene discusses the problems that NARA archivists have in preserving audiovisual
records-sound recordings, videotape, and film-at a time when the technology
changes so quickly.

And in his regular column, Archivist Allen Weinstein discusses one of the
issues at the core of the mission of the National Archives-access to records.
He details the significant progress NARA has made recently to provide increased
access to NARA’s holdings.

For nearly four decades, Prologue has shared with readers the rich resources
and programs of the National Archives, its regional archives, and the Presidential
libraries.

Each issue features historical articles-drawn from National Archives' holdings
and written by noted historians, archivists, and experts-as well as articles
explaining and describing many of the National Archives’ activities and
programs as the nation’s recordkeeping agency. The Washington Post said, “Prologue
. . . can be regarded quite literally as an invitation for further study. It
is also consistently absorbing reading.”

A one-year subscription to Prologue costs $20, and you can order in a number
of ways:

Call 202-357-5482 or 1-800-234-8861

Print out an order form and mail it to Prologue, P.O. Box 100684, Atlanta, GA, 30384.

Single copies of Prologue are available at the Archives Shop or at the Cashier's
Office in the National Archives Building in Washington or at the Publications
Sales Office at the National Archives at College Park. Back issues are also
available at the College Park location. Single copies are also available in
the shops at some Presidential libraries.

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For more information about the National Archives and its programs and exhibits, go to www.archives.gov.